Beautiful Lies (46 page)

In the rain the match took reluctantly. She hunched her shoulders, cupping her spare hand around the tip of her cigarette as she sucked in the flame. Above her, a tumble of rocks led to a narrow trail along the lip of the hill in the direction of Ferrixao. Her cigarette clamped in her mouth, her skirts bunched in her one hand, she scrambled up the rocks, her boots slipping a little on their rain-greased skin.

By the time she reached the trail the rain was falling in earnest and cloud veiled the lake. She hurried back towards the village. In a field that sloped up from the path several young boys were picking stones, gathering them in the pockets of oversized canvas aprons. They worked in silence, their hair slicked flat by the rain, their narrow bodies hunched over the weight of their cargo. Her cigarette had gone out. She stopped to relight it, watching the children as they stooped over their work. Their clothes were worn, their wooden shoes fat with mud. The rain fell harder, sticking their shirts to their backs. She could see the curves of their ribs through the wet cloth, the ridges of their spines.

The paper of the cigarette was wet too. She pulled in her cheeks, frowning with the effort of making it catch. In the field one of the boys straightened up, his fists on his hips, and stared at her. She smiled. The child called out something in Galego and the taller boy who worked beside him turned round to glance at Maribel. She thought she heard the word
cigarillo
as the taller one replied, lobbing a stone in the younger boy’s direction. When the younger boy ducked the taller one laughed and returned to his work. The younger boy’s jaw jutted. He glared at Maribel as though he dared her to laugh too. His hair fell over his face and in his famished old-man’s face his dark eyes were huge. Then he too bent down and began once more to gather stones.

Blinking the rain out of her eyes, Maribel hurried away.

T
HE VISITORS’ PARLOUR
was a small room dominated by a polished oak table, its feet carved to resemble the clawed paws of a lion. On one whitewashed wall a large fireplace was presided over by a heavy iron chimney, an unlit fire neatly made up in the grate. The hearth was spotless. Opposite the fireplace, above a stiff row of high-backed oak chairs, a discoloured Jesus writhed on a wooden crucifix. There were no other adornments, except for plain iron sconces set at intervals into the wall, each bearing a half-burned candle, and a plum-coloured velvet curtain strung at shoulder height on the far wall. The velvet looked dusty, paler on the outward creases of the curtain where it had been bleached by the sun. It was hard to think of the room filled with sunlight. The two small windows were barred.

Maribel smoothed her skirt, shaking fragments of straw and dried mud from its hem. Then she sat down to wait on the chair nearest to the door, her hands folded in her lap. Her throat was dry. It had shaken her, how little she remembered. She had prepared herself for the avenue of trees, the wide gates, the grove of orange trees. Instead the farm cart that had brought her here had deposited her on the far side of the convent. She had entered through a side door into a high-walled passage which led directly to this room. It was like entering a prison.

She sat, her hands making patterns in her lap. It was very quiet. No one came. She longed to smoke a cigarette but she was afraid that in a convent smoking might be forbidden and she had no wish to provoke the nuns. She shifted on the chair. The wooden seat was slippery and uncomfortable. Later she stood, contemplating Jesus. His ribs protruded from beneath his yellow skin and brown blood streamed from his hands and feet and from his temples. The crown of thorns around his head was fashioned from twisted metal, the thorns sharp as razor blades. Beyond the window bells rang out. The end of sext, she thought, with a jolt of recognition. Her heart beat faster and, for something to do, she began to walk around the table, touching each of its corners with her fingertips as she passed. She thought of Edward, one bead on a string of felons, circling the prison yard. Beyond the door she heard footsteps. Suddenly she could not remember what it was she had thought to say.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Yes?’ she murmured and the word stuck like a wafer to the roof of her dry mouth.

A convent servant opened the door. She was slight and pale-faced, barely more than a child. She carried a tray with a carafe of water and a glass which she placed on the table. Gratefully Maribel poured herself a little water and drank. The girl did not speak. Instead, her head lowered, she scuttled across the room. Groping behind the purple curtain she pulled a cord. The curtain opened bouncily, like a puppet theatre, Maribel thought, except that behind the curtain was an iron grille, perhaps one foot and a half square, framed in curled iron brackets. The crisscrossed bars were beaten flat, leaving only small holes in the metal. At the centre of each cross was a tiny flower. The maid curtsied briefly, her eyes on the floor, and hurried from the room. The iron latch of the door clicked shut behind her.

‘My apologies,’ a voice said softly in Spanish from behind the grille. ‘We have kept you waiting.’

Maribel hesitated. Then, her glass clasped tightly between her hands, she approached the grille.

‘Prioress?’

‘The Prioress cannot receive visitors without an appointment.’

‘I see.’

‘You may talk to me.’

The voice was husky, deep enough almost to have been a man’s. A smoker’s voice. There was a silence. Maribel wished she could smoke. Instead she took a sip of water. Her hand was unsteady.

‘What is it that brings you here, my child?’

Maribel swallowed, placing her glass on the table. It should be easier, she thought, to talk to oneself, without the requirement to disregard the expressions on another’s face, the tightening of the lips, the faint pinching of the skin between the eyebrows.

‘I –’

She bit her lip sharply, moistening her lips with her tongue, but still the words did not come. On his cross Jesus twisted his head away from her, his mouth wide with anguish. Maribel put her hands over her face. The voice said nothing. After a while she opened her fingers and looked at the grille. She thought perhaps she could make out a gleam of white behind the iron lattice. Perhaps, if she placed her hand flat on the metal she would feel the warmth of the nun’s breath against her palm.

‘I – I cannot see you,’ she said.

‘But you know that I am here.’

‘I think it would be easier for me if I could see you. If you were in the room.’

‘That is not permitted.’

‘So we must talk through the wall, is that it? Like Pyramus and Thisbe?’

The joke was a poor one, poorer still in her rusty Spanish. Her throat tightened, apprehension binding her stomach to her spine.

‘Ours is a closed order. We must remain within the confines of the priory.’

‘And I cannot come in?’

‘Not without the express authorisation of the Bishop.’

Maribel took another sip of water. She thought of Victor, who had always claimed to know everyone who was worth knowing.

‘Do not be discouraged,’ the voice said gently. ‘Sometimes it is easier to say things only to oneself.’

It startled Maribel, to hear her own thoughts spoken aloud. Slowly she ran her finger around the lip of her water glass. It was a heavy tumbler, unskilfully blown. Large bubbles were trapped in the thick glass like fish in ice. She set it on the table.

‘My sister was here,’ she said quietly. ‘Eleven years ago.’

‘Your sister was a novitiate?’

‘She was a visitor. For three months. The Bishop must have been –’ she hesitated, searching for the word in Spanish – ‘
accommodating
.’

The voice on the other side of the grille said nothing. ‘My sister did not live with the nuns. The Bishop was not so accommodating as all that. She spent her confinement in the cottage beyond the wall, the one beside the orange grove, and there she bore a child. A boy. When he was only a few weeks old they took him away. She let them take him away.’

There was a lump in her throat. She turned away from the grille, interlocking her hands and pressing the knuckles hard against her lips. Beyond the high barred window the sky was the inscrutable white of polished stone. She stared at it for a long moment until the lump was gone, her attention fixed upon the floating motes of dust as they darted and spun over the surface of her eyes. Then she cleared her throat.

‘Now my sister is very ill. The doctors hold out little hope. It is a matter of months, perhaps even weeks. She has made her confession, performed her penance. She should be at peace. Instead she cries in anguish for her lost child. It was to soothe her that I promised I would come here, to see if you might have any information as to the boy’s whereabouts, so that she might know him before it is too late. Of course, there is a chance that the child – that it is already too late, but, if he lives, I beg you, help me to help her. She has money. She wants to make amends. It torments her that she will die without knowing she has done what she can for him. Without his – forgiveness. She would help you, help your convent, if you were able to help her.’

The silence in the room was suffocating. Maribel did not look towards the grille. She kept her gaze fixed upon the window. When she blinked there were dark stripes in the orange of her eyelids.

‘So,’ the voice said at last, ‘she intends to make the child a bequest?’

‘Yes, of course. But this is not simply about money.’

‘No. She seeks to acquaint herself with the boy.’

‘It is her dying wish.’

There was another long silence. To occupy herself Maribel picked up the glass of water. She took a sip, then another. The water tasted stale.

‘Your sister,’ the voice said abruptly. ‘She has other children?’

The glass slipped in Maribel’s hand. Unsteadily she set it down.

‘No,’ she said.

‘But she is married?’

‘Yes. She is married. And very respectable.’

‘And this respectable husband of hers is a good man?’

‘A very good man.’

‘I think perhaps the child is not her husband’s son? That he knows nothing of the boy?’

Maribel hesitated a fraction too long.

‘She is angry at him, perhaps? Perhaps she resents him for not giving her another child?’

‘That is absurd. It has nothing whatsoever to do with him.’

‘You are right. And yet it would seem that she seeks to bequeath him her torment.’

‘She is dying. She wishes to atone for her sins.’

‘But at what detriment to those she leaves behind? If she lights this tinderbox she will see only the pretty flames. It will be her husband who must afterwards sift through the charred remains. He and the boy.’

‘There may be difficulties, of course, but they can be overcome. And does the boy not deserve to know his mother?’

‘Perhaps the child already has a mother.’

Maribel faltered. She rubbed at her temples with her fingertips as though she might smooth out the disordered tangle of her thoughts.

‘His real mother,’ she said.

‘To what end, child? So that he might experience the grief of her abandoning him a second time?’

‘Death is not abandonment.’

‘Do you think a child understands that?’

Angrily Maribel shook her head.

‘You are twisting everything. She seeks to heal, not to hurt. The boy is her child, her flesh and blood. He is a – a part of her.’

‘No. After eleven years it is his absence that is a part of her. The amputated leg continues to ache. That does not make the leg real.’

‘The boy is real.’

‘Yes, if he lives. But her husband, the very good man, he is real too.’

‘And so is my sister. Her suffering is real.’

‘I do not doubt it. It is when we suffer that it is especially hard to remember that our actions continue to have consequences. Even those we carry out to punish ourselves.’

The glare of the white sky through the barred windows hurt Maribel’s eyes. She put a hand over her face.

‘He is her son,’ she whispered.

‘She has managed to live without him for eleven years. She must know how it is done.’

‘Just because one learns to endure does not mean one is obliged to do so.’

‘Perhaps not. But when it is such a hard lesson, it is better to learn it only once.’

Once again the silence spread itself implacably between them. Slowly Maribel shook her head.

‘“Judge not, that ye be not judged”,’ she said. Her heart was very heavy. ‘That is what I was taught as a child. And yet you, a daughter of God, would judge my sister, of whom you know nothing.’

‘I do not seek to judge her. Only to guide you, who loves her well enough to come here in her place.’

Outside birds had begun to sing, a restless flurry of peeps and whistles. Somewhere a door banged. Maribel felt exhausted, empty of words. At the base of her skull a headache began to tremble.

‘Then you will not help me?’ she asked at last.

‘I have done what I can.’

‘You have not told me where I might find the boy.’

‘No. I have not done that.’

‘And you will not?’

‘I cannot.’

‘For the love of peace –’

‘It is not as you think. The cottages by the orange grove are not a part of the priory. They were once, a long time ago, but not for a century at least. For some time they were used by pilgrims on their journey to the cathedral at Santiago but that was long before my time. The pilgrims no longer come this way and the cottages are empty. They say they are falling down.’

Maribel stared at the grille.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Whatever arrangements were made for your sister and her child, they will have been undertaken privately. They will have had absolutely nothing to do with us.’

Maribel thought of the old woman with her monkey face and her rosary beads. She had taken the child. Maribel had hidden her face then. She had not had the courage to look. She thought of Oedipus on his mountain, of Moses lifted from his rush basket in the reeds by an Egyptian princess. She thought of the Irish babies during the Great Hunger, abandoned in the ruined fields to be pecked by crows. She thought of Victor and of all the people that he knew and the desolation spread through her like ink.